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For my part I am satisfied that anyone considering the mode in
which Matter participates in the Ideas will be ready enough to
accept this tenet of omnipresence in identity, no longer
rejecting it as incredible or even difficult. This because it
seems reasonable and imperative to dismiss any notion of the
Ideas lying apart with Matter illumined from them as from
somewhere above- a meaningless conception, for what have distance
and separation to do here?
This participation cannot be thought of as elusive or very
perplexing; on the contrary, it is obvious, accessible in many
examples.
Note, however, that when we sometimes speak of the Ideas
illuminating Matter this is not to suggest the mode in which
material light pours down on a material object; we use the phrase
in the sense only that, the material being image while the Ideas
are archetypes, the two orders are distinguished somewhat in the
manner of illuminant and illuminated. But it is time to be more
exact.
We do not mean that the Idea, locally separate, shows itself in
Matter like a reflection in water; the Matter touches the Idea at
every point, though not in a physical contact, and, by dint of
neighbourhood- nothing to keep them apart- is able to absorb
thence all that lies within its capacity, the Idea itself not
penetrating, not approaching, the Matter, but remaining
self-locked.
We take it, then, that the Idea, say of Fire- for we had best
deal with Matter as underlying the elements- is not in the
Matter. The Ideal Fire, then, remaining apart, produces the form
of fire throughout the entire enfired mass. Now let us suppose-
and the same method will apply to all the so-called elements-
that this Fire in its first material manifestation is a multiple
mass. That single Fire is seen producing an image of itself in
all the sensible fires; yet it is not spatially separate; it does
not, then, produce that image in the manner of our visible light;
for in that case all this sensible fire, supposing that it were a
whole of parts [as the analogy would necessitate], must have
generated spatial positions out of itself, since the Idea or Form
remains in a non-spatial world; for a principle thus pluralized
must first have departed from its own character in order to be
present in that many and participate many times in the one same
Form.
The Idea, impartible, gives nothing of itself to the Matter; its
unbreaking unity, however, does not prevent it shaping that
multiple by its own unity and being present to the entirety of
the multiple, bringing it to pattern not by acting part upon part
but by presence entire to the object entire. It would be absurd
to introduce a multitude of Ideas of Fire, each several fire
being shaped by a particular idea; the Ideas of fire would be
infinite. Besides, how would these resultant fires be distinct,
when fire is a continuous unity? and if we apply yet another fire
to certain matter and produce a greater fire, then the same Idea
must be allowed to have functioned in the same way in the new
matter as in the old; obviously there is no other Idea.
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